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Who said what: The effects of cultural mindsets on perceptions of endorser-message relatedness

Mina Kwon, Geetanjali Saluja and Rashmi Adaval

Scientific Abstract:

The cultural lens through which an ad is viewed can affect the extent to which an endorser of the product in an ad and the message s(he) communicates are thought about in relation to one another. Consumers with a collectivist mindset tend to think about information relationally. onsequently, they consider the endorsement in relation to the endorser and this affects their memory for both. It also affects recipients' concern with the fit between the endorser's message and the endorser and consequently influences their judgments of both the ad and the product being advertised. When people have an individualist mindset, on the other hand, they appear to treat the endorser and the endorsement as independent pieces of information and are less sensitive to their fit. Four studies support these conclusions and provide insights into how endorser-message relatedness impacts persuasion under different cultural mindset conditions.

Layperson Abstract (500-1000 words) :

Have you ever wondered why advertisements that are intended to influence people from another country or culture fail to do? Multinationals spend considerable amounts on advertising that is targeted to different cultural groups and yet they constantly run the risk of producing advertising that does not resonate with them. New research suggests that the cultural mindset or cultural orientation that people have could influence not only the cultural knowledge that they bring to bear in interpreting ads but also how they look at the information that they see.

Cultural orientations have been broadly classified into “collectivist” and “individualist” orientations. An individualist orientation, dominant among European-Americans, is characterized by a tendency to think of information independently of its context. A collectivist orientation, dominant among Asians, is characterized by a tendency to think of information in relation to its context. However, these orientations can co-exist within a given individual to varying degrees. Thus, a person could behave like a “collectivist” in some situations and an “individualist” in other situations. The cultural orientation that is most salient in a situation might influence not only the cultural knowledge that a person brings to bear in a situation but also activate a mindset to process any information that they are presented with.

These cultural mindsets can have interesting effects in the context of advertising as this research shows. Most advertisements contain many different elements such as pictures and descriptions of the product and the endorser, brand names, price, etc. An individual’s cultural orientation or mindset can affect how these different elements are processed. Consumers with an individualist mindset tend to extract the main point of the message, whereas those with a collectivist mindset tend to connect and integrate across message elements. These differences could be reflected in their sensitivity to the fit or connection between certain elements of an ad. Thus, a person with an individualist mindset might be more likely to focus on the content of the message whereas a person with a collectivist mindset might, in addition to the message, focus on whether the endorser and the message fit, whether the endorser is appropriate for the product advertised, does the endorser's non-verbal behavior fit the message being communicated etc.

To document this, the researchers conducted four experiments. To activate different cultural dispositions, they used a technique called “priming” in which unrelated tasks are used to make certain concepts more salient. This technique was used to activate different cultural mindsets. An individualist orientation was activated by asking participants either to write an essay about how they are different from others or circle first-person singular pronouns (“I”, “my” etc.) in a paragraph whereas a collectivist orientation was activated by asking them either to write an essay about how they are similar to others or to circle first-person plural pronouns (“we”, “our” etc.). After activating these dispositions, participants (in the first experiment) read a set of statements made by different endorsers about different brands. Later, they were given a memory test to determine if people with a collectivist mindset were more likely to match the message with the correct endorser. This was indeed the case. Individuals with a collectivist orientation paid more attention to the message and who said it because of their tendency to think of things in context. They consequently had a better memory for who said what.

In a follow up experiment, participants who were primed with different cultural mindsets were presented with ads that either had an endorser whose characteristics fit the message or did not. For example, the ad message “To be happy, age must be carried with dignity” for an organization supporting the elderly was received more favorably when it came from an older person than from a younger person if participants had a collectivist orientation than if they had an individualist orientation (Experiment 2). The results showed that cultural orientation can affect sensitivity to the fit between the endorser and the message s(he) communicates.

In Experiment 3, the authors determined whether participants were indeed paying attention to the fit between the endorser and the message (as opposed to the fit between the endorser and the product category advertised). They used two endorsers (an older versus a younger male) to advertise sportswear with the tagline, "Let nothing beat you". The ads were created so that the picture of the older endorser fit the message "Let nothing beat you" because he looked tired and appeared to be trying really hard whereas the image of the younger endorser did not create the same impression. Once again, the findings revealed that people with a collectivist orientation were more sensitive to fit between the endorser's characteristics and the message. Thus, they evaluated the ads more favorably when the endoser was older and his non-verbal expression and behavior fit the message.

Finally, in Experiment 4, the advertisement showed only the elderly endorser endorsing sportswear with either the message, "Let nothing beat you" (suggesting high fit) or the message "Be cool and trendy" (suggesting low fit). As expected, people with a collectivist mindset were more likely to distinguish between these messages and showed greater liking for the ad and the product when the message and the endorser fit than when they did not.

In combination, the four studies raise some important issues about how ads might be interpreted by people from different cultural backgrounds. These differences were apparent even within the same culture depending on which cultural mindset was made salient at the time. They may be even more apparent across cultures. The research shows that consumers with different cultural mindsets can recall information from ads differently and also interpret it in different ways. The sensitivity of collectivists to source-message fit suggests that people from collectivist cultures might be more sensitive to nuances conveyed in advertising and suggests that advertising messages might often fail to have the desired impact because of their failure to take issues of fit into account.